


but the end never comes

by NotSummer



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Heavy Angst, Memory Loss, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 04:32:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8518597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotSummer/pseuds/NotSummer
Summary: Live. Die.Each life is important. Shepard, Inquisitor, Consular, and Revanchist among thousands.Live. Die.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am 100% reincarnation trash. Main pairing is Shakarian, all others are an accessory to the fact.

Her first life, she is a Jedi. As an apprentice, she seeks lost knowledge and hidden blades. She seeks to prove her worth, to show people that her worth is not defined by her Sith heritage. She succeeds, and as she extends her hand to the plaguemaster she becomes something more.

She is the Barsen’thor, the Warden and Guardian of the Order.

She wields a golden blade as the ground shakes underneath her feet and she shields innocents from dark plagues. She falls in love, but in the end, she chooses the Order instead. For all that she had given Felix her heart and cherished their bond, her soul belonged to the Jedi, and her life was her duty.

In the end, she falls to Vitiate as he seizes control of her ally’s body and the red blade pierces her stomach. She dies slowly and in horrible pain, but she chokes out reassurances to Nox, the togruta’s hand clasped in her weakening grip as Nox can only look on in helpless horror and guilt.

* * *

Her next life, she’s human. She’s not sure when she became aware that there was more to her life than the people next to her, but slowly she realized that the people around her had only lived a single life. So people wonder why a child barely two feet tall has such a strong sense of duty, why she has such strong opinions on the neighbors who loudly declare all the aliens to be awful monsters, and why she’s so serious all the time.

Her biotics manifest as the slavers arrive, and it’s not the Force, and she still feels lost and unconnected, but power is something she understands, so she slams the batarians back in a brutal display. This time, she has no fear of the dark, and there is nothing to hold her back.

When the Alliance arrives, they find a 16 year old girl kneeling quietly in the middle of the carnage, the bodies of her fallen friends and neighbors and the irritating dog lady from three houses down surrounding her, waiting to be buried.

Duty comes easily, and she throws herself back into it, and there’s no Jedi and she can’t be the Barsen’thor, but she becomes an N7.

Running small strike teams is what she excels at, and if she draws on her experience from her past life, it’s not cheating, _maybe_ , but just using all her resources. She rises quickly through the ranks, gaining a reputation for justice and a preternatural calm.

And then the shakedown cruise of the Normandy goes horribly wrong. A Spectre dead, another turned traitor, and the geth have returned. She’s got another vision in her head, and she thanks the Force for Jedi training, because she’s not sure she would have survived without it.

When she melds with the asari, they both remark on how organized her mind is. She doesn’t let them see her memories, only the vision. She shrugs and returns to the cargo hold where Wrex and Garrus bicker while repairing and modding the Mako and their armor, far more at home with them, two people who remind her so much of her closest friends and her long lost lover. Qyzen and Felix hover in her thoughts, but less so with every passing day.

She fights through Saren’s forces, Garrus and Wrex always at her side and she rips through Saren twice, once to kill him and another time to ensure he stays dead.

So Saren’s skeleton gets back up again, and with a frustrated huff, she yells.

And the Force answers, and a Wall of Light slams into Saren’s shambling corpse, and it disintegrated.

She doesn’t have to fake her shock, but she is forced to hide her grief as the sense of belonging she felt as she touched the Force once more slips through her tenuous grasp. She misses it, the Force. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever stop missing it.

She mopes until she dies.

And wakes up.

This isn’t a new life, though, and she’s got the same name, even if her face is a little more gaunt and a lot more scarred. So she finds her center, breathes, and slams through the ~~droids~~ mechs, the old word sticking in her head. She laughs as this new ability to hurl herself into the fight manifests, and she sets her omnitool to create an orange blade.

She races into the fray, and the beings that don’t run shatter before her might. She’s forgotten what it felt like to be the spring one heartbeat from snapping, and she revels in the thrill.

And then she comes back to herself, stands in the middle of a bloodbath and furiously wipes a tear from her eye.

She has forgotten what it means to be a Jedi. So she retreats to her calm, and she fights, but she does not dance through the fights in a wild thrill. She prioritizes duty over all else.

Garrus though. She does not anticipate. Sometimes she thinks she sees Iresso in him, but she blinks and it’s gone. ‘Tis a disservice to her loyal friend. After a few more months, she never glimpses Iresso again.

And then they are through the relay, and the air around the Collector Base feels like Korriban, and the Dark is heavy here and she can’t breathe, can't even gasp, and she panics and then.

A taloned hand on her back, dual tones voice whispering in her ear, and blue eyes meeting her ~~red~~ green ones. So she continues with a grateful glance that says more in a few seconds then she could ever say in a lifetime.

Let them think it was panic and PTSD. The truth is hers to hold.

She destroys the base, wiping her hands clean of the Illusive Man. She destroys the Alpha Relay. She sits in judgement for her crimes, and does not fight.

Not until Vancouver falls. Not until Earth burns.

And then that heady sense of purpose fills her, and she has saved a galaxy before, been an ambassador before, and been a general before, so she sets to work.

She rescues the Primarch. She rescues Eve. She rescues Grunt. She rescues the Krogan people.

She falls even more in love, and it has become a unshakable truth of the galaxy that where the human spectre is, there Vakarian will be too.

She hunts Cerberus. She hunts Kai Leng. She hunts for the closure of the war, but in the end, it comes to her.

She never makes it to the bar.

* * *

She does not know how many lives pass. Sometimes she is a hero. Sometimes she does what she must to survive. Sometimes she gives in.

* * *

And a hundred lives or a thousand lives later, she comes to on a Republic cruiser. She convinces herself it was all a dream, she is safe, but then a private comes rushing in, and it’s clear that no matter how brightly the Force burns in her heart, she is not a Jedi here.

When she hears the names Bastila, Endar Spire, and Carth Onasi in the space of five minutes, she has an awful feeling she knows where this is heading. When she crashes on Taris, she knows, but she tries to deny it to herself.

So she does all she can for people, and she hides rakghoul serum in the Dynamet hospital, cloaking herself in the Force to avoid being seen, and when she returns to the apartment she laughs, because she remembers how in her first life she had wondered why the hospital had the serum in so many vaults and all over and so unorganized.

The blasts hit, and she isn’t laughing anymore, even if Canderous is while blasting down Sith fighters with all the cold precision of a butcher’s blade.

Her head locks between her knees as she tries not to cry as the Force reverberates with agony.

 _She is Revan_. There aren't words fer her horror, nor are there words to describe the weight of the burden she must now carry.

Three hundred years later, she watches her first self turn from staunch ally to doubting partner, and then, finally, step between the Wrath, her allies, and Revan.

Revan can do nothing but smile sadly at the young girl. But she fights, and she has fought this fight before, so she knows how she loses, and she fades.

There is no death, there is the Force.

* * *

 She’s not sure how many times she lives and dies. Sometimes she’s a sole survivor, a vault dweller, a courier, or a lone wanderer. Sometimes she’s an exile. Sometimes she’s a dragonborn, a spartan, or a witcher. Once, she raises an army, only to be betrayed by her lover and burned at the stake. It takes her a dozen lives to stop being bitter about that one.

A few times, she is a Jedi.

* * *

After all this, she forgets who she was. Was she ever mortal? _Irregardless_. She is something else now.

Whatever name she wears on her mortal shells, in her head she is simply the protagonist.

Eventually, her lives begin to cross paths, even if she never faces herself again.

* * *

 And one day, she wakes up, and knows somehow, somewhere, this is her final life. She is locked in a tower with others unfortunate enough to be born with power. They recite the Chant of Light, and dammit, but she recognizes the words from a previous life.

She doesn’t bother telling them that, of course.

So if she gets a reputation for not taking the Chantry seriously and for rolling her eyes at the Templars, sue her. Deep in her bones, she knows this is her last life, and she’s going to enjoy it.

Even when the Circles fall, she is the calming voice of reason, using laughter and smiles to get her point across. She’s had a thousand lifetimes to amass a reservoir of jokes, after all. Her easygoing personality earns her a place at the Conclave, and the Force, answering her for the first time in dozens of lives, settles, carrying a sense of rightness.

She rolls her eyes at her inconstant companion and when it urges her to go down a flight of stair instead of up to the negotiating rooms, she goes.

And wakes up three days later. She does not care for the hole in her memory, not at all. She storms through the rifts, drawing upon her strength in the Force as much as the mark in her hand to close them. Another ancient being walks at her side, but she has lived far longer and far harder than he. The Force is with him, and when his startled gaze meets her, she can tell he knows she is not what she appears to be.

And so he watches her, just as she keeps an eye on him, but she is far more transfixed by the ex-Templar commanding her forces. He reminds her of someone, and she knows she should remember who ~~slap some face paint on there~~ but she can’t ~~this is my favorite spot on the citadel~~ she just can’t ~~meet me at the bar~~.

When he finally opens up about Ferelden, the errant thought, “At least they didn’t put a Sith Holocron in your head,” slithers through. She doesn’t understand. She’s never known someone with a Holocron shoved in their mind.

Has she?

When she learns the scar’s story, she has to stop herself from drawling, “At least you didn’t take a rocket to the face.” It must have been someone important. It felt important.

Hawke slings an arm around her best friend, and explains to a bemused Inquisitor (the title feels wrong, like there should be some sliminess ~~Darkness~~ to it), “Well, there’s no Hawke without Varric.”

And, “Just like there’s no Shepard without Vakarian,” slips through her lips in a quiet breath. Thankfully neither of them hear, too caught up in old stories.

How much has she forgotten?

When she returns from the second closing of the breach, her lover and commander announces he’s headed to the bar. “I’m buying,” he grins, boyish and light hearted in their victory, and she has to keep herself from stumbling.

But she doesn’t know why.

When he asks her to marry him, she grins. “I’m a one-Templar woman, Cullen. Just waiting on you to ask.” As far as she knows, the statement has never passed her lips. But things are getting harder and harder to remember.

After vows are exchanged, she belts out “I am Inquisitor Trevelyan and this is my favorite spot in Orlais.”

A statement so ripe with delight shouldn’t feel so burdened with grief for an empty memory.

_Maker, what’s happening to her?_

She lives her life, but the memories are all fading.

When she gives her last gasp, she is alone. She has a simple ring on her finger, but she can’t remember why. She is not afraid to die, and this puzzles her too.

Surely everyone is afraid of death?

But she greets Death like an old friend, sits down at a bar, orders a beer, and she smiles, because as her body died, her mind lived, and she remembers.

Someone owes her a drink.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so Cullen got shafted a bit in favor of Garrus, but I needed to make the story work. Anyways, Cullen and the Protagonist had their happily ever after, I just didn't write it in. Couldn't make it work.
> 
> Also, it's 2AM, and I'm posting this before I lose my nerve.


End file.
